Here there be Monsters
by thesiegeworks
Summary: He was a job. And then he wasn't. (This is the story of an unlikely friendship. Of trust and betrayal... lies and deceit... hot pockets and video games - and Loki.)
1. The Hook

A portal had been opened. Aliens had poured through it to attack. Manhattan had been decimated. All this, to be laid at the feet of one man - an Asgardian named Loki. The world had nearly been lost.

But it wasn't.

Earth had heroes to defend her in her time of need. Iron Man. Captain America. The Hulk. Hawkeye. Black Widow. Thor. The names were on every tongue after the disaster they resolved. Some people praised them... some cursed them. But all knew their names, and the name of the man responsible. _Loki_.

They took him prisoner, but without the bifrost Thor was unable to return the prisoner to the place that could best keep him under guard. The Realm Eternal. Asgard. _Home_. And so they had need to keep him safely locked away until a device could be constructed to use the Tesseract - that great and terrible source of power - to open a portal between Earth and Asgard. They had a need of something that could nullify his powers so that he may be contained. Something... or someone.

* * *

_Quick Author's note: this takes place immediately after the avengers and may (probably will) encompass Ironman 3, Thor 2, Captain America 2, Agents of Shield and possibly even Avengers 2. I do not own the Avengers or any Marvel character._


	2. Into Nothing

_Author's Note/Disclaimer: I do not own any of Marvel's universe or the contained characters, only my OC and a few incidental characters who do not appear in any of the movies, comics, or other media. This story will encompass most of the Avengers-centric movies starting with the Avengers but mostly in between Avengers and Thor 2. Yes, I know you still don't know the OC's name, or why she is so "special" or really anything plotwise. This is more exposition and prologue to bring you up to speed to the main story line._

She drew a deep breath as the timer counted down, the seconds slowly clicking over as they drew near the extraction point. The heel of her hand pressed against the steadying familiarity of the coin in her pocket. Good luck. They would need it. Two of their best agents pinned down with no way out but up, and it would be their job to secure an area for the 'copters to get in where they could reach them. The agents were already retreating this way, so they'd be on a time limit. They couldn't afford to lose these agents, so... they couldn't afford for her to be just another soldier.

As the timer clicked 5... 4... 3... she sketched sigils covertly on the stock of her M4, closing her eyes against the tell-tale gold light that roiled within them. _Sigr._ Victory. _Otta-lauss._ Without fear. _Sigr. Otta-lauss_.

1.

The doors opened, and she stepped forward into nothingness.

* * *

Five years I had been an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Three years I'd been a field agent. I'd worked countless missions, with countless agents, and had done nothing to attract attention. A good solid agent, anonymous, just one of many. Better than most, not good enough for the elite. I could get a job done, I could work with just about anyone. I just didn't stand out.

I wanted it that way.

Five years I'd been hiding what I am, hiding why my "intuition" was so often right. Why the teams I worked with always did just _that_ much better than they usually did. Blending. If I stood out, if I became one of the elite like Clint Barton or Natasha Romanoff,

Back to the helicarrier, this time on guard detail. Seemed they'd managed to capture the one who was behind the chaos - an Asgardian, black of hair and pale skinned. Good looking, in a sickly, probably-used-to-be-sex-on-two-legs sort of way, but from what I understood all Asgardians were like that. It didn't mean anything about the person underneath, and the person underneath was making all of my alarm bells go off at once. He just... _smelled_ wrong, and the energy coming off him was beyond the scope of my experience. I was more than happy to come off guard duty that day. Though I knew he would see or _feel_ anything different about me, it was unnerving to have those uncaring eyes sweep over me, knowing that if my control slipped he'd _know_, and it took all my willpower to keep my physical body as calm and serene as I had been taught. He made my hackles rise, or he would if I'd had any.

But my reprieve was short-lived. Off duty or not, something told me to stay in full kit. Some buildup of energy that tingled along my nerve endings, like blue sparks racing down my fingers. I'd felt this before. This was Tesseract energy. Couldn't they feel it? Should I warn them? I didn't know, and the point was moot when an explosion rocked the helicarrier. An attack! Loki? No, this was human intervention, though I had no doubt the dark Asgardian had orchestrated it. But how? Why?

I joined the defensive force, knotting sigils and muttering below my breath as I joined with my team. Somehow it didn't quite seem to matter if someone managed to catch a glimpse of my eyes in the fray - surely it would be dismissed as the queer affects of adrenaline. After all, we were likely to fall out of the sky at any moment. I had time only to tap the good luck coin in my pocket before we were advancing. My mind was cool and clear as I took point for my group and I leveled my M4 at the invading force. My team was well trained and bolstered by my presence, and the enemy fell as we moved forward. But I couldn't... wouldn't reveal myself completely, and the enemy was equally well trained. My team, too, was slowly whittled away. Where were the rumored Avengers that Fury was putting together? Off having coffee while S.H.I.E.L.D fought and died to keep our bird in the air?

The M4 spat fire, and a fighter fell. I swung the short rifle's sight around to the next target, and time slowed. It was Barton. Hawkeye, alive and well, and coolly drawing back an arrow sighted on me. I had time, I could have dropped him, but I hesitated. My hand tightened but something wouldn't let me squeeze the trigger. My intuition? It was screaming to me that he was on our side. So why? Time was up, the arrow flew, and I jerked to the side a moment before it struck. The force of the blow drove the arrow through the meat of my right shoulder, right under the clavical, and the pain dropped my hand from my M4 to leave it dangling from the shoulder harness that strapped it to me as my left hand came up to clutch at the arrow. _Don't pull it out_ I thought dimly as I tripped backward to land hard on the ground. Fighting through the pain I pulled my sidearm from the holster left handed and came up shooting. Barton was gone again already, but there were more mercenaries to take out...

I found out later that Barton had found Romanoff. They'd fought, she knocked his head off a bar. Apparently the trauma to the head was enough to reset him and shake the influence of the Tesseract energy, something I was quite glad to hear. Barton was a damn good agent, and a good man, and it would have been a great loss if intuition had not stayed my hand. Thor, the golden Asgardian, had vanished. The Hulk had vanished. Agent Coulson - one of the most well known and well respected agents in SHIELD - was dead at Loki's hand. More importantly... Loki had vanished, and with him the scepter that he used to bend people to his will. We'd won, but we hadn't. We kept the helicarrier in the sky, but they had what they needed and had gotten away. While we sat in the helicarrier and licked our wounds, the Avengers... or what was left of them... set out to do what they'd been intended to do. Protect Earth.

And they did a good job of it, too. Defeating the invading Chitauri force and capturing Loki - with really no help at all from SHIELD. We'd even _fired a missile_ at Manhattan. If Ironman hadn't stopped it, SHIELD might have been the cause of far more deaths than the Chitauri. It was sickening. What was just as sickening was the devastation left in the wake of Loki's attack. The deaths, the homes and businesses and _lives_ destroyed because of him. I didn't lose anyone in the attack on New York. I didn't _have_ anyone to lose. But I had known, and I had worked beside and lived beside, the agents who had died aboard the helicarrier. For _five years_ of my life I had known and lived among them and even though I was not truly _of them_, I still cared. I still hurt. But I didn't hate, and maybe that influenced the decision that led to my whole life changing.


End file.
